Musings on Change

Sooner or later everything falls apart – without a nudge, a wink, a warning we gradually part ways with the familiar.

Our understanding of the world and our place in it changes, and if we’re lucky, we evolve.

Still, hearts grow heavy along with our gaits, our steps loose a bounce, and if we’re not careful our spirits too can abandon their once childlike buoyancy. 

Those people you once swore could leap tall buildings in a single bound, protect you from any peril all while screaming shamelessly at the top of their lungs at Saturday morning soccer games trade capes for canes and a quieter type of life.

The sense of being becomes more peaceful, more human, more poetic.

I wonder how much time I've spent trying to piece back together what could no longer be:

youth back to old, 

sickness back to health, 

dreams into being. 

How many times did I quietly convince myself life would be different? How often did I choose solitude over community? Abandon family to saunter the narrow streets, and crooked paths the world over?

What was it I hoped to find in all my unchartered strolls? Was it purpose? Validation? Love?

Wherever I seemed to go, whether beside the roily waters of the Hudson or the placid surface of Lake Merritt, I walked and walked in desperate hope that one or the other would take me by the hand and guide me home.

Yet to feel rudderless is not always as treacherous as it may sound. Yes, the choppy waters can be merciless at times. They may throw you against jagged rocks, or leave you stranded on a desolate bank. 

But if you can weather those tempests, which you must, you'll lift your gaze ever so slightly to get a clear view of the lighthouse just beyond; a place of hope, of possibility, of what lies ahead.

It will be filled with people - the kind waiting for you to extend your hand and call on them for the love they so desperately want to give.

And when you do, it won’t matter the city, or coast where you hang your hat because the light will stretch far beyond any boundary. It will take you back the next time you feel yourself drifting.

But in turn you must also reach out, extending your own open hand to those who now need you. 

Because that day will come. 

And when it does, you'll need to be ready.

You'll need to already be home.

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